Jambo, a Congolese Web3 Startup Secures $7.5m Seed Funding

Jambo, a Congolese web3 startup, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding. The round was made up of Coinbase Ventures, Three Arrows Capital (3AC), Alameda Research, Tiger Global, Delphi Ventures, AllianceDAO, DeFiance Capital, Yield Guild Games and Polygon Studios. 

A couple of angel investors from the web3 ecosystem like Polygon co-founder and CEO Sandeep Nailwal; ex-ParaFi partner Santiago R Santos; Terraform Labs co-founder and CEO Do Kwon; and partner at Delphi Digital Piers Kicks.

Founded in 2021 by James Zhang, Jambo, a Congo-based startup building Africa’s web3 user acquisition portal through “learn, play, earn” and democratizing access to crypto-based income-generation opportunities.

Jambo wants to introduce young Africans to Web 3 financial ecosystems through play-to-earn gaming and decentralized finance (Defi) services including currency exchanges and remittances.

“Honestly, anything that helps in Africa – send money, save money, make money – is what we’re testing off of the super app,” co-founder and CEO Zhang.

Since January, Jambo has signed up over 12,000 students across 15 African nations including the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Nigeria and Ethiopia to complete a Web 3 curriculum, designed to allow students to explore opportunities in play-to-earn and Defi, the statement said.

“We’re literally going campus by campus. We’re, I think, signing on one to two per week, started about a month ago. We’re at around more than six college campuses already. Hoping to enter 10 or 15 by the end of [March],” Zhang said.

The startup is setting up local teams and offices in 15 countries to test and provide services that cater to the diversity of communities and nations across the continent, according to Zhang.

“We have the long-term vision of realizing financial prosperity for billions across the continent and are committed to fostering the next generation of Web 3 innovators, builders, and creators,” he said.